CHAP. III

A Florentine workshop

95

2

of their workshops, and can note how simple was their dress 1 and fare, how careless they were of externals, how absorbed in the pursuit of their inspiring craft. We can visit them as they labour at home among their apprentices, or follow them to the chapels which they clothe with frescoes. We know them as men of shrewdness and humour 3 delighting in good cheer and festive talk after the day's work is done. Unassuming in manner but able to preserve their frankness and their wit in the presence of the great,5 they are conscious of their own worth but fully satisfied with the external conditions under which they had been brought up-conditions which, however unlike those surrounding the artist of the sixteenth century or of more modern days, were extremely healthful to the particular form of art they practised.

§ 65. Interior of a Florentine workshop.

We are in the quarter of the painters in the Florence of the fifteenth century, and stop before a door over which swings the sign of the guild of the Speziali figuring the Madonna and Child upon a ground of white. Within is a workshop long and large communicating by a door at the further end with the master's own house, and already,

8

1 Vespasiano da Bisticci, Vita di Cosimo de' Medici (about Donatello). 2 Vasari, ed. Milanesi, ii. p. 398, Vita di Donato.

8 Such was especially the character of Giotto, of whom many anecdotes were current. See his life by Vasari. Boccaccio, Giorn. vi.

Nov. 5.

Sacchetti, Nov. 75, etc.

4 Sacchetti, Nov. 136.

5 Vasari, i. p. 390, Vita di Giotto.

6 As early as 1269 a legal document mentions a certain residence at Florence as situated 'inter dipintores.'-Vasari, i. p. 265.

7 Gaye, Carteggio, ii. 39, quotes documents of the fourteenth century, showing the inclusion of painters in the guild of the 'Speziali' or Apothecaries, probably on account of their use of pigments classed as 'drugs.' 8 Sacchetti, Nov. 84.

though it is early morning, the scene is a busy one. On tables against the wall or on easels are arranged sundry panels and carved crucifixes in progress, and a dozen apprentices or assistants are engaged on various stages of the work. Some make a beginning by smoothing and clamping together panels of poplar wood and covering them with linen cloth, over which is spread the smooth white gesso painting-ground; others model in relief in gesso, with incrustations in costly stones, the crowns and ornaments of the saints already sketched in in charcoal by the master's hand.1. A finished crucifix yonder is having its ground gilded, the surface having been previously stamped with a small diaper pattern while the gesso was still wet; and hard by an assistant skilled in carving is at work on an elaborate late Gothic frame for a tempera panel which has just been carefully laid in by one of the older apprentices. Beside the door some boys beginning their artistic career are rubbing down on a stone with pure water the frescopigments-brown, red and yellow earths, with lime for the white, the precious ultramarine blue, for the use of which there is always a special contract, being kept under lock and key. Further on, more experienced hands are mixing the finely-ground tints to the consistency of cream, and setting them aside in little jars ready for the master-frescoist's The master will paint to-day at the Franciscan convent, in the votive chapel of the great family whose ancestral palace, barred and towered, overhangs his house and workshop, and is to have with him as aids four of the most advanced apprentices. These meanwhile as they wait the maestro's appearance are discussing that absorbing topic of

use.

1 Cennino Cennini, Buch von der Kunst, Wien, 1871, c. 113 ff.

2 Metallic whites, such as those made from lead or zinc, do not serve for fresco. Cennino gives a receipt for the preparation of limewhite, bianco-Sangiovanni, in his 58th chapter.

CHAP. III

Master and Apprentices

97

interest for Florentines the forthcoming Carnival, at which the different corporations of the city are to contribute fresh and splendid pageants. A hundred names are in the airnames of ancient Romans and of Christian Saints, names of Virtues and Graces and Personifications from mythology or from sacred legend. Processions and groups of these are sketched out; pageants lately seen by travelled assistants in other cities are described; for each figure the appropriate costume and head-dress and attributes are argued over, the older youths showing considerable acquaintance both with Scripture and with legend, gained for the most part in conversation with intelligent clerics during the progress of mural decoration in the churches.

All conversation is now checked as the master enters from his house, clad as for work in hose and belted doublet.

He holds a roll of cartoons in his hand and signs to an apprentice to come forward with a plasterer's journeyman who has been awaiting his pleasure. The roll when displayed shows a coloured study for the mural composition on which he is engaged, and pointing out to his assistant and to the plasterer that portion of the work he has laid out for execution on that particular day, he sends them forward to the chapel to spread over the corresponding part of the wall the fresh coat of smooth plaster, or intonaco, on which the painting will be carried out. With them proceed other chosen assistants carrying the jars of paint, the brushes and sponges, and a heavy roll of cartoons, over which the master is accustomed to spend no inconsiderable portion of the night. Before he can himself follow them he must go the round of the shop and give each apprentice or journeyman his task for the day. If he is of the temper of Domenico Bigordi called Ghirlandajo, who insisted on his apprentices accepting every commission that came to the

shop, were it but the painting of hoops for ladies' baskets,1 these tasks might be varied enough. There are, let us suppose, certain shields to be emblazoned with the armorial bearings of the Adimari. The nuns of Sta Barbara, outside the Porta San Friano, have vowed a procession to a neighbouring shrine, and need a banner painted with the figure of the saint beside her tower, to be borne before the abbess at its head. The wedding chest, for the nuptials of Ursula the fair daughter of Ser Arnolfini the notary of San Felice, has been brought in from the shop of Dello di Niccolo the sculptor, who has carved the Cupids holding the medallions on the sides, and these have now to be respectively gilded and painted with the story of the lady's patron saint. Old Bertoluccio the flesher from the Mercato Vecchio hard by, needs a new sign-board over his booth, and has left the old one for a pattern late last night in the hands of a new apprentice, whose lofty ideas of his art were somewhat scandalised by so paltry a commission. These new tasks are at once portioned out among the journeymen according to their several capacities and grades of training. A word of direction suffices for one, while another receives a rough sketch in charcoal for his guidance. Work in progress is then reviewed and criticised, and at last, donning his cloak and drawing the hood of it over his head, after signing to his favourite pupil to attend him, the master leaves the shop and wends his way to the neighbouring convent church.

§ 66. How the votive chapel was painted.

Let us glance in there at the votive chapel a little later in the morning and see him at his task. At the end against the western wall has been erected a scaffold, and on 1 Vasari, iii. p. 269. Vita di Ghirlandajo.

CHAP. III

A Cycle of Frescoes

99

it are busy two of the apprentices. Against the space of freshly-laid intonaco provided for the day's work, they have nailed up a cartoon, on which are drawn out at full size the figures, architecture and accessories destined to fill it. They pass over the outlines with a blunt-pointed stylus of iron, dinting the paper so as to impress on the yielding plaster a line sufficient to guide the painter in his work.1 A small coloured sketch of the whole composition has been given out of the roll to a third, who is specially skilled in appreciation of colour, and he is mixing the tints required for the day, taking a dark, light and middle tint for each differently coloured robe,2 for the fair flesh of the female saint or the tanned skin of the pagan executioner, for the architecture and background. These tints he will place in little pots ready to the master's hand when he begins to paint.

§ 67. A Cycle of Fresco-paintings.

Meanwhile the master himself has not yet set his hand to the work, but is seated on one of the carved benches lining the walls, in deep conversation with the Prior of the Convent over the sketches for the whole work, which lie unrolled before them on the floor. The pictures are designed to celebrate the entry into the Franciscan Order of a younger scion of the noble family, a youth of equal learning and ambition and full of zeal for the Order. The subjects are drawn from a Franciscan legend and deal with the

1 Vasari, Introduzione, della Pittura, c. ii. Opere, ed. Milanesi, i. p. 175. The use of the full-sized cartoon was a later improvement, not known to Cennino, who directs the painter to square out his design on the wall from a small sketch. In other points of fresco practice his precepts differ from the description given here, which probably represents pretty accurately the custom of the fifteenth century.

2 Cennino, c. 71.